Image-Leptonica-0.04

NAME

Image::Leptonica::Func::recogdid

VERSION

version 0.04

recogdid.c

recogdid.c
Top-level identification
l_int32 recogDecode()
Generate decoding arrays
l_int32 recogMakeDecodingArrays()
static l_int32 recogMakeDecodingArray()
Dynamic programming for best path
l_int32 recogRunViterbi()
l_int32 recogRescoreDidResult()
static PIX *recogShowPath()
Create/destroy temporary DID data
l_int32 recogCreateDid()
l_int32 recogDestroyDid()
Various helpers
l_int32 recogDidExists()
L_RDID *recogGetDid()
static l_int32 recogGetWindowedArea()
l_int32 recogSetChannelParams()
static l_int32 recogTransferRchToDid()
See recogbasic.c for examples of training a recognizer, which is
required before it can be used for document image decoding.
Gary Kopec pioneered this hidden markov approach to "Document Image
Decoding" (DID) in the early 1990s. It is based on estimation
using a generative model of the image generation process, and
provides the most likely decoding of an image if the model is correct.
Given the model, it finds the maximum a posteriori (MAP) "message"
given the observed image. The model describes how to generate
an image from a message, and the MAP message is derived from the
observed image using Bayes' theorem. This approach can also be used
to build the model, using the iterative expectation/maximization
method from labelled but errorful data.
In a little more detail: The model comprises three things: the ideal
printed character templates, the independent bit-flip noise model, and
the character setwidths. When a character is printed, the setwidth
is the distance in pixels that you move forward before being able
to print the next character. It is typically slightly less than the
width of the character template: if too small, an extra character can be
hallucinated; if too large, it will not be able to match the next
character template on the line. The model assumes that the probabilities
of bit flip depend only on the assignment of the pixel to background
or template foreground. The multilevel templates have different
bit flip probabilities for each level. Because a character image
is composed of many pixels, each of which can be independently flipped,
the actual probability of seeing any rendering is exceedingly small,
being composed of the product of the probabilities for each pixel.
The log likelihood is used both to avoid numeric underflow and,
more importantly, because it results in a summation of independent
pixel probabilities. That summation can be shown, in Kopec's
original paper, to consist of a sum of two terms: (a) the number of
fg pixels in the bit-and of the observed image with the ideal
template and (b) the number of fg pixels in the template. Each
has a coefficient that depends only on the bit-flip probabilities
for the fg and bg. A beautiful result, and computationally simple!
One nice feature of this approach is that the result of the decoding
is not very sensitive to the values used for the bit flip probabilities.
The procedure for finding the best decoding (MAP) for a given image goes
under several names: Viterbi, dynamic programming, hidden markov model.
It is called a "hidden markov model" because the templates are assumed
to be printed serially and we don't know what they are -- the identity
of the templates must be inferred from the observed image.
The possible decodings form a dense trellis over the pixel positions,
where at each pixel position you have the possibility of having any
of the characters printed there (with some reference point) or having
a single pixel wide space inserted there. Thus, before the trellis
can be traversed, we must do the work of finding the log probability,
at each pixel location, that each of the templates was printed there.
Armed with those arrays of data, the dynamic programming procedure
moves from left to right, one pixel at a time, recursively finding
the path with the highest log probability that gets to that pixel
position (and noting which template was printed to arrive there).
After reaching the right side of the image, we can simply backtrack
along the path, jumping over each template that lies on the highest
scoring path. This best path thus only goes through a few of the
pixel positions.
There are two refinements to the original Kopec paper. In the first,
one uses multiple, non-overlapping fg templates, each with its own
bit flip probability. This makes sense, because the probability
that a fg boundary pixel flips to bg is greater than that of a fg
pixel not on the boundary. And the flip probability of a fg boundary
pixel is smaller than that of a bg boundary pixel, which in turn
is greater than that of a bg pixel not on a boundary (the latter
is taken to be the true background). Then the simplest realistic
multiple template model has three templates that are not background.
In the second refinement, a heuristic (strict upper bound) is used
iteratively in the Viterbi process to compute the log probabilities.
Using the heuristic, you find the best path, and then score all nodes
on that path with the actual probability, which is guaranteed to
be a smaller number. You run this iteratively, rescoring just the best
found path each time. After each rescoring, the path may change because
the local scores have been reduced. However, the process converges
rapidly, and when it doesn't change, it must be the best path because
it is properly scored (even if neighboring paths are heuristically
scored). The heuristic score is found column-wise by assuming
that all the fg pixels in the template are on fg pixels in the image --
we just take the minimum of the number of pixels in the template
and image column. This can easily give a 10-fold reduction in
computation because the heuristic score can be computed much faster
than the exact score.
For reference, the classic paper on the approach by Kopec is:
* "Document Image Decoding Using Markov Source Models", IEEE Trans.
PAMI, Vol 16, No. 6, June 1994, pp 602-617.
A refinement of the method for multilevel templates by Kopec is:
* "Multilevel Character Templates for Document Image Decoding",
Proc. SPIE 3027, Document Recognition IV, p. 168ff, 1997.
Further refinements for more efficient decoding are given in these
two papers, which are both stored on leptonica.org:
* "Document Image Decoding using Iterated Complete Path Search", Minka,
Bloomberg and Popat, Proc. SPIE Vol 4307, p. 250-258, Document
Recognition and Retrieval VIII, San Jose, CA 2001.
* "Document Image Decoding using Iterated Complete Path Search with
Subsampled Heuristic Scoring", Bloomberg, Minka and Popat, ICDAR 2001,
p. 344-349, Sept. 2001, Seattle.

recogMakeDecodingArrays

recogMakeDecodingArrays()
Input: recog (with LUT's pre-computed)
pixs (typically of multiple touching characters, 1 bpp)
debug (1 for debug output; 0 otherwise)
Return: 0 if OK, 1 on error
Notes:
(1) Generates the bit-and sum arrays for each character template
along pixs. These are used in the dynamic programming step.
(2) Previous arrays are destroyed and the new arrays are allocated.
(3) The values are saved in the scoring arrays at the left edge
of the template. They are used in the viterbi process
at the setwidth position (which is near the RHS of the template
as it is positioned on pixs) in the generated trellis.

recogRunViterbi

l_int32 recogRunViterbi ( L_RECOG *recog, PIX **ppixdb )

recogRunViterbi()
Input: recog (with LUT's pre-computed)
&pixdb (<optional return> debug result; can be null)
Return: 0 if OK, 1 on error
Notes:
(1) This is recursive, in that
(a) we compute the score successively at all pixel positions x,
(b) to compute the score at x in the trellis, for each
template we look backwards to (x - setwidth) to get the
score if that template were to be printed with its
setwidth location at x. We save at x the template and
score that maximizes the sum of the score at (x - setwidth)
and the log-likelihood for the template to be printed with
its LHS there.

recogSetChannelParams

l_int32 recogSetChannelParams ( L_RECOG *recog, l_int32 nlevels )

recogSetChannelParams()
Input: recog
nlevels
Return: 0 if OK, 1 on error
Notes:
(1) This converts the independent bit-flip probabilities in the
"channel" into log-likelihood coefficients on image sums.
These coefficients are only defined for the non-background
template levels. Thus for nlevels = 2 (one fg, one bg),
only beta[1] and gamma[1] are used. For nlevels = 4 (three
fg templates), we use beta[1-3] and gamma[1-3].

AUTHOR

Zakariyya Mughal <zmughal@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2014 by Zakariyya Mughal.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

Module Install Instructions

To install Image::Leptonica::Func::recogdid, simply copy and paste either of the commands in to your terminal